Editor's Column

Guest Columns

Forest Facts

By: Jim Petersen

“The days are ended when the forest may be viewed only as trees and trees viewed only as timber. The soil and water, the grasses and the shrubs, the fish and the wildlife, and the beauty that is the forest must become integral parts of resource managers’ thinking and actions.”

- Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey

Jim Petersen

In this issue of Evergreen Magazine we write about forests and forestry in Minnesota — and especially about the state’s fabled white pine.

No tree has played a more significant or lasting role in American history than the eastern white pine. Just as surely as gold would later lure the nation west, white pine fueled development of the Northeast and the Midwest. Crudely sawn white pine framed the earliest buildings in five of America’s greatest cities—Boston, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and St. Louis—and it subsequently sheltered millions, fired blast furnaces and powered the locomotives and steamships that mobilized the Industrial Revolution. Directly or indirectly, all of the great nineteenth century timber, steel and railroad fortunes rested on its abundance.

the monarch of eastern forests, its unmistakable silhouette was sewn into the fabric of the first Revolutionary War battle flag—a symbol of the new nation’s defiance of English rule, in particular British Royal Navy appropriation of all white pine two or more feet in diameter. The towering giants made ideal ship’s masts at a time when Baltic unrest threatened England’s control of the high seas. Crown axmen marked reserved trees with a “broad arrow” and colonists who cut them down risked hanging. The so-called Broad Arrow Acts pushed freedom-hungry colonists ever closer to war with England.

But the English were not the first Europeans to see eastern white pine. That distinction probably belongs to the Vikings, though some historians credit French explorer Jean Nicolet with its subsequent exploitation in the Great Lakes Region. Cathay-bound Nicolet stepped ashore near Green Bay, Wisconsin in the summer of 1634. Though he never reached China, or found the gold and silk he sought, he did find fur, and it was fur, and the great wealth it created, that first drove explorers and trappers deep into the region’s vast white pine forests.

(Top) No one in Minnesota has devoted more time or invested more money in white pine restoration than Jack Rajala. Here, he stands between two giants on one of his tree farms. (Bottom) Some 25 million trees are planted annually in Minnesota forests. Most are grown from seeds in nurseries for 1–2 years before replanting. These seeds—red cedar, black and white spruce and red, white and jack pine— photographed at Potlatch Corporation’s Cloquet nursery attest to the diversity of the replanting effort. Not all species require replanting after harvest. Many including aspen, birch, balsam, and balm of gilead regenerate naturally in full sunlight.

Of course, long before Europeans reached American shores, eastern white pine held a special place in Indian ritual. To the warring Iroquois nations—the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora—it became a symbol of the Great Peace that united them some 500 years ago. The founding of the Iroquois League, symbolized in legend by the planting of a single white pine, is still celebrated today. Fossil-pollen records indicate eastern white pine forests first appeared in Minnesota about 7,000 years ago. The species has been in slow decline in the eastern Great Lakes and Northeastern regions for about 4,000 years. Although the decline has been less evident in Minnesota, its east-west range has varied as much as 60 miles as a function of warming and cooling trends that occurred between 3,500 and 2,500 years ago. These trends are thought to have resulted from changes in the earth’s orbit.

Over the last century and a half, human events have changed Minnesota forests in four ways. First, the total area occupied by forests has been reduced. Clearings for agriculture and urbanrelated expansion are the primary reasons. Second, there is less old forest and more young and mature forest, a direct result of the cumulative impact of human events. Third, species composition is changing, in large measure because wildfires are no longer allowed to burn unchecked. There is, for example, more aspen and less white pine. And fourth, Minnesota’s pre-settlement landscape, once broken only by wildfires, violent winds and geography, is now divided into millions of small pieces, most of them privately owned. Farming, urban sprawl, road and highway construction, railroad and utility corridors and (more recently) vacation home developments are the chief causes of continuing forest fragmentation.

In the 14 years we’ve been publishing Evergreen Magazine, we’ve never seen so much public interest focused on a single tree species. Across the state, especially in urban environs, there is great interest in restoring white pine. Just how much of this interest is real and how much is a proxy for those who dislike the way Minnesota’s forests are being managed is virtually impossible to discern. No matter the reason, there is a good deal of public misunderstanding surrounding both the history and ecology of white pine. Many believe vast white pine forests blanketed the state before white settlement began, but this was never the case. In fact, white pine was—and still is—rarely found in pure stands.

In the course of our investigation, we made four trips to Minnesota: first to confer with State Division of Forestry staff members and University of Minnesota scientists, and thereafter to explore the likely potential for restoring white pine. Along the way, we discovered a robust, technologically advanced forest products industry profoundly different from the industry that prospered here a century ago. Pulpwood has replaced lumber as the primary product and aspen has replaced white pine as the tree of choice. White pine now accounts for less than one half of one percent of Minnesota’s annual harvest. This fact ought to reassure those who favor a ban on white pine harvesting; though as we discovered, its future is paradoxically far more dependent on active management than outright preservation. There are now significant private and public investments in white pine reforestation, but whether Minnesota taxpayers will be willing to underwrite their portion of the cost of the tree’s long-term care is an open question.

Minnesota’s fascination with white pine has caused many to overlook an event of equal or greater significance: the emergence of hybrid poplar. Borrowing from the results of biomass research conducted by the federal Department of Energy during and after the Arab oil embargo, four companies—Potlatch, Boise Cascade, Blandin and Champion International—are growing poplar experimentally on idle farmland across the state. Apart from stunning growth rates (12- year-old trees 60 feet tall, with trunks eight inches in diameter), hybrid poplar holds a unique advantage over aspen: it can be grown from cuttings—meaning that precise genetic traits favoring growth, resistance to diseases and tree form can be emphasized. If these experimental plantations prove themselves, which seems likely, fast growing poplar would allow papermakers and OSB manufacturers to remain competitive globally at a time when land and fiber costs are increasing. And because it is most efficiently grown and harvested in an agricultural rather than a forest setting, it might well become an important cash crop for economically hard-pressed Minnesota farmers.

An aspen stand west of International Falls, Minnesota. It is about 35 years old and belongs to Boise Cascade Corporation. Aspen is a mainstay at the company’s International Falls paper mill. In Minnesota, aspen is the mainstay of both the pulp and paper industries and the oriented strandboard (OSB) industry. . Despite the fact that harvesting is increasing in Minnesota, the superimposed graph shows it is still miniscule compared with the harvest that occurred in the early 1900s. Source: Dana, et al., and USFS.

(Top) The future of forestry in Minnesota looks bright, but balancing the timber industry’s raw material needs with the aesthetic interests of outdoor enthusiasts will require patience and mutual respect. (Bottom) Logging is mainly a winter business in Minnesota. When the ground is frozen soil erosion is rare.

In preparing this report, we referenced several valuable sources. For anyone wanting to learn more about Minnesota’s forest past we highly recommend Agnes Larson’s fine 1949 work, History of the White Pine Industry in Minnesota. For a more current view, we recommend the proceedings of the 1992 White Pine Symposium, published by the University of Minnesota College of Natural Resources and “Minnesota’s White Pine, Now and for the Future,” a 1996 report by the White Pine Regeneration Strategies Work Group. Also of great value, DNR’s web site, http: www.dnr.state.mn.us, and two reports: “Minnesota’s Forest Resources,” 1999 and “Minnesota’s Forest Resources at a Crossroads,” 1993. The Minnesota Forest Resources Council’s 1999 “Biennial Report on Sustainable Forest Resources Act Implementation” also proved valuable as did the 1994 “Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Timber Harvesting and Forest Management in Minnesota,” by Jaakko Poyry, a global forest consulting group hired by the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board. Equally valuable were several research papers given to us by Lee Frelich and Klaus Puettmann, two fine University of Minnesota forest scientists.

We have many to thank for their assistance and support in developing this special issue. Minnesota State Forester Jerry Rose first approached us about this project more than two years ago. Meg Hanisch, Public Affairs Specialist, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, shepherded us through the state’s grant approval process. Our old friend, Dr. Jim Bowyer, Director of the Forest Products Management Development Institute at the University of Minnesota, arranged a series of on-campus interviews with forest scientists, then developed the “Minnesota Forestry Quiz” that appears on Page 27. The Forest History Center at Grand Rapids also proved to be a gracious host. What a fine museum it is. If you haven’t visited, you’ve missed a most entertaining educational experience. Boise Cascade Corporation, Potlatch Corporation and Blandin Paper graciously toured us through their manufacturing and forestry operations—and picked up the tab for costs that exceeded our state grant. Last, but certainly not least, Jack Rajala shared his time and his passion for white pine. Over the last 17 years, Mr. Rajala has planted more than 2.5 million white pine seedlings on his family’s land. He even wrote and published a book about his experiences. Bringing Back the White Pine is both a forester’s manifesto and a how-to guide for wouldbe planters. We doubt that anyone anywhere can match his extraordinarily personal contribution to white pine restoration.

One might legitimately ask why the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources would ask a Montanan with roots in Idaho and an office in Oregon to evaluate its state’s forests and forestry. Fresh perspective is the best answer I can offer. Although Minnesotans pride themselves on being able to settle their differences amicably, there lingers a fear that the political disembowelment that has gutted the West’s rural timber communities might occur here. But with so little federal forestland in Minnesota it seems unlikely, at least so long as Minnesota remains a populist state held together by strong rural-urban voting blocks.

"We must always consider the environment and people together, as though they are one, because the
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."